If there were any doubts about Elon Musk’s political influence in the contemporary Republican Party, they were largely erased last week. After all, the world’s wealthiest individual managed to play a leading role in derailing a bipartisan spending bill negotiated by the GOP’s own elected congressional leaders.
What’s more, as the process unfolded, Republicans made no secret of the fact that they were in frequent communication with Musk — keeping him in the loop and updating him on the granular details, as if he were the president-elect — despite the fact that he’s heading up a powerless advisory panel that doesn’t have any real, statutory authority.
But as odd as it was to see the process unfold this way as actual policymakers raced to prevent a government shutdown, the GOP’s line on the controversial billionaire keeps getting stranger.
On Friday night, for example, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma appeared on CNN and boasted about Musk and Donald Trump “working together as a team” ahead of the shutdown deadline, as if the billionaire were somehow the vice president-elect.
Two days later, Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee also appeared on CNN and declared, in reference to the bipartisan spending bill that his party rejected a few days earlier, “Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter, because that’s the only way we’d even know what’s in this bill.”
Perhaps the senator should’ve thought this through a bit more. For one thing, Musk didn’t help lawmakers “know what’s in this bill”; he effectively did the opposite by peddling misinformation about the legislation that fell apart under scrutiny. Even Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana publicly conceded, “Elon was saying things that frankly weren’t true.”
What’s more, the idea that false tweets from a billionaire were “the only way” for senators to know what was in the legislation is belied by the fact that senators and their aides could simply read the bill. Indeed, Hagerty is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The idea that he, of all people, was dependent on bogus claims from Musk suggests that the Tennessean and his office weren’t doing their jobs especially well ahead of an important deadline.
But around the same time as Hagerty’s appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” another congressional Republican was going even further. NBC News reported:
Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, on Sunday compared tech mogul Elon Musk to a “prime minister,” praising Musk for speaking out against an early version of a stopgap funding bill last week. “It’s kind of interesting,” Gonzales said during an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker. It feels like as if Elon Musk is our prime minister.”
In context, as a video clip of the comments makes clear, Gonzales’ comments were not a complaint. Rather, the Texas Republican made the observation as if it were a positive development. The congressman added that he spoke with Musk “a couple of times” last week, amid the unexpected Capitol Hill drama.
When CBS News’ Margaret Brennan reminded the lawmaker that Musk isn’t an elected official, Gonzales, after suggesting that the billionaire is effectively “our prime minister,” went on to say that Musk’s voice is “a reflection of the voice of the people.”
So, a couple of things.
First, while parliamentary systems around the world vary, prime ministers invariably need to win some kind of election before claiming power. Being pals with a president-elect isn’t supposed to be enough to serve in a position of authority — in this country or any other.
Second, while Gonzales might see the world’s wealthiest individual as “the voice of the people,” there’s compelling evidence to the contrary. In fact, the latest public opinion research suggests that the American people aren’t altogether comfortable with an unelected billionaire exerting governmental influence.
The more Republican officials shrug their shoulders in response to such evidence, the more they invite a backlash.
